


Open Fire

by picklebridge



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 21:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1999038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/picklebridge/pseuds/picklebridge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Bastard always jokes that Ed’s the only one who can resist falling at his feet. It pangs a bit to break his winning streak now.</p><p>(Spoilers for Brotherhood)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open Fire

**Author's Note:**

> It's two in the morning and I'm a bit hysterical so I really apologise for the ending of this. There will also be a follow-up in which I make everything okay, so honestly, it's only a death fic for now. I don't have the heart to actually kill my darlings. 
> 
> Yeah, this is what happens when I read sad tags and headcanons on tumblr, [namely this post](http://royyed.tumblr.com/post/92444309801/jaclcfrost-limbozoneguardian-jaclcfrost), and have too much time on my hands. I don't think I've got Ed's voice down properly yet.

There isn’t time to think when he sees the gun. All he is aware of is the frightened, wild beat of his heart and the relaxed look on Roy’s face, blissfully unaware of the doom awaiting him. There are faint lines forming around his eyes - oh how Ed wishes they were from laughter - but the curve of his mouth is finally soft and hopeful; happy. He can’t bear to see that shatter. 

So he flings himself forwards. His chest heaves raggedly, his coat flies open – _fuck_ is it cold – and the world seems to stutter, lost in a moment of dreadful silence. He hates guns. They’re cold and wicked. No object should be made for killing, and ‘sides, there’s something about a long-range weapon that sits funny in his stomach. You could kill someone with those things and never even see their face. Hawkeye keeps trying to make him use one, saying ‘you have to defend yourself Edward’ and in retrospect perhaps he should have listened, no matter what his stomach told him at the time. She’s always right, after all. If he had one of his own maybe he wouldn’t be flinging himself at the love of his life like some ridiculous martyr. 

The Bastard always jokes that Ed’s the only one who can resist falling at his feet. It pangs a bit to break his winning streak now.

His automail leg creaks with cold as he lands heavily in front of Roy and hunches around him, the damp morning air catching in his throat and curling the swinging strands of his bangs. He feels too thin, too soft, too useless. The space in his veins where alchemy used to be throbs like a phantom limb as one last breath forces its way out. A new recruit had once foolishly tried to intimidate him, goading him to admit that he was scared of him now that he wasn’t a ‘flashy State Alchemist’. Ed hadn’t seen any reason to fear an overweight meat-suit with less brains than a hunk of lard, and had happily told him so. Well, screamed actually. But that was what happened when you went around telling people they were _puny_ , when they were quite clearly _normal sized_.

Anyway.

Point is, Ed distinctly remembers screeching he’d admit fear ‘over his dead body’. Which is quite fitting, really. Because he’s fairly certain that even if he survives this, Al is going to throttle him with his bare hands, in which case nobody is going to get to see the terror he is Officially Not Feeling anyway. His breath seems to die in that last fraction of a second, creating a traitorous blockade in his throat. 

Yeah, okay. So maybe he _is_ a little scared. 

Roy has had just enough time to draw his brows together and open his mouth, and Ed has had just enough time to marvel at how damn perfect he looks. What a jerk.

The shot is horrifically loud. Ed feels his body jerk hard so hard his teeth rattle in his skull and then he is unaware of anything but his flesh knee thudding against the pavement. The concrete rises up to meet him, curling around the sprawl of his arm, the bony corner of his hip that Roy always complains about when Ed wraps around him in the night. There is a buzzing in his ears and he feels bone-shatteringly cold.

One cough hacks out. Then another. Something shifts inside him, alien and sharp and utterly _wrong_. Oh yeah, there’s a bullet in his back, isn’t there? He should be a fucking detective. Another cough drags itself out of the confused depths of this throat and that’s it, he’s done for. A niggle works its way up through the shock and all of a sudden Ed feels like he’s been sucker-punched with a brick.

Every muscle locks into strained paralysis, twisted agony crawling up his spine to sink dark claws into his fluttering heart. The epicentre of Earthquake Elric seems to be about half way down and to the left, but then he has to stop thinking about that because the moment he does the pain intensifies until he’s filled with crackling static from one edge to the other. 

With sparse seconds and the twitch of someone's finger, a whole decade of fighting for the right to live has been rendered utterly superfluous. Hours of hunting and cursing and searching and screaming so he and Al could live, live, _live_ \- gone. Ed can feel the very core of himself start to shatter under the decimating force of the angry thing tearing through his ribcage. For the first time he is totally, utterly helpless, unable to stop the rippling convulsion that breaks like a wave through his body.

 _Roy_. Where is Roy? Ed sucks in another frantic little breath, hears more gunshots, further away now. He can’t feel any of his remaining toes. As an expert on limb loss he can reliably say that this isn’t a very good sign and hopes vaguely that they haven’t wandered off somewhere. He needs those.

“ _Ed_.” He knows that voice, especially when it’s saying his name. It doesn’t normally sound that upset though. Fucked out and blissful, more like. “Oh _God_. Ed, you idiot –“

Trembling fingers press against the strained tendons in his neck then ghost down his body. He can smell fresh ink and embers. Which can only mean –

“R- Roy,” he croaks out slowly, robotically. Damn, he sounds like he’s smoked every cigarette Havoc’s ever bought in one sitting. His mouth tastes like rust and his lips aren't responding properly to the flickering thoughts in his head. “You – You hurt?”

Roy chokes out something that sounds suspiciously like a sob. Ed frowns, his face muscles a sluggish mask of drying wax. Words keep falling out of his brain and shattering against the tip of his tongue. His blood feels like it’s burning.

“No, I – I’m. Fine.” Roy chokes out the word like it’s something disgusting. “Where does it hurt? Fuck, I can’t see -”

Suddenly there is agonising pressure over the hole in his back and Ed makes a noise that even he can’t pretend isn’t a scream. His teeth cage it in a little but he’s betrayed by the sweat beading on his forehead. Maybe he can blame it on the rain…

He thinks he can hear voices and footsteps around him, but it might just be the roaring in his ears.

“Ed! Look at me. Don’t you _dare_ die. I am _ordering_ you.”

With the possibility of a brave and noble-looking death floating impossibly out of reach, Ed decides to try and get a good page in the “Last Words Pocket-Book” that Al was reading last week instead. It’s much more his style, anyway.

“You ordered me to put away my wet towels three days ago but they’re still under the bed,” he points out, proud of himself as he reaches the full stop.

Roy lets out a watery laugh and his familiar hands gently cradle Ed’s face. “I am the Fuhrer of Amestris and even shrimps have to obey me.”

The pressure on his back intensifies again and he makes another tight sound. It is _definitely not_ a tear that leaks out of the corner of Ed’s eye. The Bastard so owes him for this. He is going to _strangle_ Roy’s bodyguards.

“I – I didn’t vote for you,” he forces out, his small uneven breaths rattling in his throat. He has the strangest sensation of floating, even though objectively he knows there’s still concrete pressing into his side. Mustering the last of his energy he cracks one eyelid back open, then the other. Roy’s face comes swimming into focus out of the grey smear that Central makes when you’re dying. It’s funny really – Roy’s cheeks are bloodless, even though Ed is the one spilling his all over the pavement. “And…m’not – _small_.”

Roy’s smile wobbles even as it appears, then takes a sharp dive as Ed’s lungs decide they’ve had enough abuse and promptly go on strike. His spine convulses again, his head filling with white noise. The roaring in his ears rises to a blistering crescendo.

"Stop, focus on me Fullmetal," in his panic Roy falls back on the old title, the hard sound of it allowing him to paste on a small ounce of control. "I am going to lecture you _so much_ when you wake up, I -"

A real sob escapes him then and he leans down to press a tender kiss to the flushed skin of Ed's forehead.

Ed’s lips feel rubbery as the light peels back to reveal a tunnelling darkness. He licks them once, his mouth an ashen tomb, and focusses on the bright lights in Roy’s eyes.

“Fuhrer Bastard –“he gets out shakily, nerves popping and fizzling. Never mind his toes, now he can’t feel his face. “I love –“

A cough interrupts, awareness flickering in each time his wrecked lungs spasm feebly. It doesn’t last.

“- Your pancakes. But – also you. Lots.” He chokes out. "Tell Al-"

Abruptly, thick blood expels itself from his throat and he stops trying for words that have lost themselves in the blockage. They don't really have to be said, anyway; whatever Ed could tell him, Alphonse already knows.

His eyes slide shut and his limbs don’t feel like his anymore. The darkness that claims him is eternal and soft, but without the people he loves he knows it will never feel like home.


End file.
